Home-baked cookies are generally characterized by a random, non-uniform topography. The topography is developed by hand-shaping, by dropping dough pieces onto a flat surface by means of a fork or spoon, and by patting the dough piece.
In a known method for making cookie preforms on a mass production basis, an appropriately formulated dough is rolled between cylindrical rollers of which one or both have recesses corresponding to the desired shape of the cookie preforms to thereby cut the dough to the desired shape and mold the surface of the preform. While this technique, known as "rotary molding", makes it possible to obtain a regular and uniform surface texture, if the cookie preform is desired with an embossed pattern, the rolling process can also result in a compression of the dough that affects the taste qualities of the resulting cookie. Moreover, the preforms and resulting baked cookies each look alike because they are made from the same mold.
It is also known to use a wire-cutting operation, whereby an appropriately formulated dough is fed from a hopper downwardly through one or more nozzles located above a conveyor belt. As the dough leaves a nozzle, a cutting wire is passed through the dough so that discrete pieces of dough (hereinafter referred to as "dough preforms" or "preforms") are separated from the dough mass and fall down onto the conveyor belt. The preforms on the conveyor belt may then pass through an oven for prompt baking, or the preforms may be collected from the conveyor belt for later baking. Wire-cut preforms and cookies baked therefrom have a generally flat top surface and a "rougher" appearance than rotary molded products. The baked cookies sometimes have numerous cracks over the surface, believed to be formed by gases, e.g. H.sub.2 O, CO.sub.2, and NH.sub.3, escaping from the interior of the dough mass during the baking step. However, the surface topography is generally flat or uniformly curved.
Cookies that contain pieces of particulate edible matter, typically flavorings such as chocolate chips, nut, and fruit pieces and the like (hereafter referred to as "food particles"), provide texture and taste variability and disrupt cookie surface. However, only very small food particles can be included in a dough if it is to be subjected to a conventional wire-cutting operation. Larger food particles will frequently cause breakage of the cutting wire or the particles may be forced out of the dough by the wire as it passes through the dough across the nozzle. This results in a waste of food particles. The large particles may prevent the wire from cutting all the way through the dough resulting in random tearing of portions of the dough piece. Also, as the wire encounters relatively large particles, the wire may cause excessive lateral movement of a given dough piece or non-uniform lateral movement from dough piece to dough piece. Random displacement of the severed dough pieces results in a non-uniform arrangement of the dough pieces on the conveyer belt or band upon which the dough pieces land. The non-uniform arrangement of the pieces can lead to dough piece transfer problems with respect to other belts or non-uniform baking of the pieces in a band oven. It has been proposed to add larger particles to a wire-cut cookie preform by sprinkling the particles over the preform surface prior to baking, but in this way only limited amounts of particles can be added and there is a risk that a substantial number of particles will fall off the surface and result in wastage of materials.
It has also been suggested to produce cookie preforms incorporating large food particles by extending a cookie dough containing the particles through a nozzle very slowly and at the same time not allowing the cutting wire to cross the whole of the nozzle. This reduces the chance of breakage of the wire, but only allows for very slow production rates. Various other techniques have been proposed for modifying wire-cutting apparatus in order to produce cookies containing large food particles, such as for example by using an oscillating cutting wire or a rigid cutting knife.
In yet another known process for preparing cookie preforms, the dough is advanced through a narrow, movable nozzle. This method can be unsuitable with dough containing larger food particles, which often may block the nozzle.
Yet another known method of incorporating food particles into a cookie preform includes the steps of continuously forming a dough rope extrudate having particles randomly distributed therein, laying the dough rope on a conveyor belt, and then slicing the dough rope into a series of individual dough preforms In this process the upwardly facing side of the dough rope on the conveyor belt will produce the top surface of the final cookie. Therefore, this process is limited to the manufacture of cookies having a substantially rectangular or rhombic surface, unless the preform is subjected to additional and costly forming operations. In contrast, wire-cutting and other known processes as discussed above make it possible to directly manufacture cookie preforms of any desired outer shape, such as a circular shape.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,643,904 discloses a variation of the rope-laying process described above, in which a continuously moving dough rope containing randomly distributed food particles is penetrated with pins or various disk means that engage and transversely move a portion of the randomly distributed particles through a pre-selected peripheral area of the continuously moving dough rope that corresponds to a preselected surface of the baked products. In this way higher particle visibility is obtained in the baked products, but it is still only possible to make cookies having a substantially rectangular or rhombic surface with this method.
Muffin splitting or tining is known in the art as shown for example in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,818,097 and 3,704,735. However, the considerations of such processes are different from the considerations of preparing cookie preforms from cookie dough.
We have now found that it is possible to provide a cookie preform resulting in an improved structure and surface texture of a cookie baked therefrom.
We have also found it possible to provide a cookie preform containing pieces of particulate edible matter, which pieces are generally highly visible on the surface of a cookie baked therefrom.
We have further found it possible to provide an improved method and apparatus for preparing cookie preforms on a mass production basis that are bakeable to a coarse, multi-peaked top surface, wherein the peaks are generally formed in random locations from piece to piece.